Gather the facts

If you are the buyer, what is the maximum you will be willing to pay? If you are the seller, what is the minimum you are willing to accept? You must determine what motivates your opponent. Is your opponent interested in profitability, keeping people employed, developing a new technology, or using your name as a reference? This knowledge could certainly affect your strategy and tactics.

Hygiene factors include where the negotiations will take place. In a restaurant? Hotel? Office? Square table or round table? Morning or afternoon? Who faces the windows and who faces the walls?

There should be a postnegotiation critique in order to review what was learned. The first type of postnegotiation critique is internal to your firm. The second type of postnego-tiation critique is with all of the losing bidders to explain why they did not win the contract. Losing bidders may submit a "bid protest" where the customer may have to prepare a detailed report as to why this bidder did not win the contract. Bid protests are most common on government contracts.

What you need to know about… Project Management Made Easy! Project management consists of more than just a large building project and can encompass small projects as well. No matter what the size of your project, you need to have some sort of project management. How you manage your project has everything to do with its outcome.